Dawn Williford

Dawn Williford has more than 20 years of experience in delivering internal audit, compliance and consulting solutions to Fortune 500 and middle market companies. Prior to joining BDO, Dawn was at UHY Advisors TX, LLC for 12 years and before that, she was with PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Dawn leads the Risk Advisory Services South Region, where she is responsible for practice management, including resource planning, financial performance, business development, quality control and client satisfaction. Dawn spent more than 20 years assisting clients with risk mitigation, whether assisting with IPO readiness, SOX Year 1 Implementation, Internal Audit, Contract Audit, Corporate Governance or Compliance. Dawn led the team that developed the firm’s COSO 2013 methodology and has deep understanding of COSO and the IIA standards. Dawn assists clients with the development of their internal audit department and serves as the Chief Audit Executive for her outsourced Internal Audit clients.

Dawn is the Contract Compliance practice leader and directs the efforts of our practice performing construction audits, vendor audits, royalty audits, licensing audits, joint venture audits, franchise audits, and large-scale, multi-vendor audit programs. The practice has yielded millions of dollars in cost recoveries for clients as well as valuable process changes to help clients and their contractual parties from repeating past mistakes. Dawn has participated in fraud investigations, identified root causes and internal control breakdowns that led to the fraud, and has redesigned processes and controls to help clients prevent future instances of fraud. 

Dawn has experience in all facets of the energy industry, including upstream, midstream, downstream, and oilfield services. She has spent many years performing internal audit, process improvement, and controls testing for contract drilling companies, both onshore and offshore and has extensive international experience across Asia, Africa, Europe, and South America. Dawn also works with manufacturing and retail, financial services, franchisors, and has also served one of the largest privately held ranching and farming companies in the US for more than 15 years.